Zen Traces: Exploring American Zen with Twain and Thoreau

As Zen takes root in the West, new forms continue to arise. For centuries Zen masters have tested their students with “koans” and “capping phrases.” A koan is a spiritual paradox that must be solved intuitively, a meditative practice that reveals deeper truths about the self and, ideally, leads to enlightenment. “What is the sound of one hand?” asks a classic koan. Answers typically rely on demonstrations rather than explanations. After solving a koan to the master’s satisfaction, the student chooses an insightful comment—a capping phrase—from a traditional source. The process is a strategy to transcend the limits of conventional language.

In Zen Traces, Buddhist scholar Kenneth Kraft transposes these time-honored practices in a new idiom. He selects passages from four sources: traditional Zen, present-day Zen, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. Traditional Zen is Asian; present-day Zen merges Asia and the West; Thoreau and Twain are, of course, Westerners. When a koan-like story about a contemporary Zen teacher is paired with a pithy comment by Mark Twain, something fresh emerges. The resulting juxtapositions, at once playful and serious, are surprising, delightful, and maybe even enlightening.

Kenneth Kraft, professor emeritus of religious studies at Lehigh University, is a scholar of Japanese Zen and socially engaged Buddhism.